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Accessibility in London: Awards and seminars

01 April 2019

The 2019 winners of the ABC International Excellence Award for Accessible Publishing were announced at London Book Fair with EDITORIAL 5 (ED5) of Brazil taking the publisher category and eKitabu of Kenya winning the initiative category.

ED5 and eKitabu were recognized for their achievements in improving the accessibility of e-books and other digital publications for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled.

You can read the full Accessible Books Consortium statement online here. You can read interviews with the winners of the publisher award, ED5 here, as well as the other two shortlisted publishers Kogan Page and Ediciones Godot.

Later in the week, the Publishers Association (UK) hosted an event entitled Accessible Publishing and the Marrakesh Treaty: Are You Ready?The seminar saw presentations from Kogan Page, Macmillan Education and Penguin Random House, which highlighted the opportunites and challenges different parts of the publishing industry face in preparing to implement the Marrakesh Treaty. They discussed adapting work flows, going born-accessible and more. You can read a more detailed report on the Publishers Association website here.

About the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC)

The UN agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and its partners, created the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) in 2014 to help implement the Marrakesh Treaty at a practical level. ABC is a public-private partnership; it includes organizations that represent people with print disabilities, such as the World Blind Union; libraries for people with print disabilities; and organizations representing authors, publishers and collective management organizations, including the International Authors Forum, the International Publishers Association, and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations. ABC’s goal is to increase thenumber of books worldwide in accessible formats – such as braille, audio, e-text, large print – and to make them available to people who are blind, have low vision or are otherwise print disabled.

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